Sunday, October 19, 2014

It's a start! Here comes the Buggardine Goods down the hill into Buggardine! Wheeee!

Well, check this one out, peeps!

Actually doing a bit of work on the Buggardine conversion, and have completed benchwork and hung a backdrop along the new wall of the railway in the past couple of weeks. Even stuck down some (N-scale) cork roadbed and laid some C70 flex on there, and connected it through the wall to the staging yard. No wiring done yet, but I couldn't resist from hooking up my old MRC ModelMaster 12v DC power pack and running a handy DC-capable locomotive up and down the tracks a few times. . . not an Australian model, however, but a newly-delivered addition to the "U.S. Collection," a Bowser C636 in Burlington Northern paint. And it sure looked neat negotiating the s-curves!

But for this photo, I've mocked up what would perhaps be a typical goods train on this line (please excuse the Victoria Railways guard van on the rear--it was the easiest to pull out of the storage bin!). As I've written before, after even a little bit of progress in layout building, I'm usually hauling out structures or vehicles or trees or equipment and "mocking up" scenes such as this one. Doing this helps me as well conceptualize the scenery work ahead--for instance, there will be a short bridge across a creek and a rural road back where the 4th and 5th wagons are in the photo. And from this angle, I'm hoping a cutting and vegetation will disguise the hole in the wall.

This was the first time I'd used Open Grid construction (vs. L-girder), and just as the Kalmbach book said it would, it made positioning uprights to hold sub-roadbed a breeze. Another item that came in handy: a Husky digital level, which allows me to set the gradient of the subroadbed to a maximum 2.5% (probably averages out to 2.1 or so down the hill).

The backdrop is .060 styrene sheet, in this instance glued to masonite board in the corners. This helps the sheet keep its shape and not warp. The masonite backing will only be used in the corners and where sheets of styrene join.

You'll notice those gnarly nut/bolt/washers also: This is part of my attempt this time to make the railways sectional, if not portable. I'm hoping in 10 years or so, when we move from this place, I'll be able to save most of the layout.